


her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you

by purplecrescent



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Multi, Protective Sokka (Avatar), Sokka (Avatar)-centric, and sokka loves his mom so much, because he deserves it, like kind of a sokka character study, they all deserve love and find love again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:07:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 3,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26674162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplecrescent/pseuds/purplecrescent
Summary: “You don’t need to do this all on your own, you know.”His eyebrows furrow as he looks at her. Suki. Her hair still ruffled from the journey, a bruise forming on her shin. Brown eyes."Do what?"“Protect everyone," she explains, and almost laughs at the look he gives her. “All of you do it, you know. You all try to protect everyone so much, you don’t even realize all the others want is to protect you."
Relationships: Bato/Hakoda (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Sokka/Yue (Avatar)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 56





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> chronological order? i dont know her
> 
> so im back with this style of writing and yes, im still not sure how i feel about it. but i think this is a lot easier to read than my zuko fic and i also broke it into chapters because that made sense? at the time at least. either way, i hope you enjoy it!!

Before the war colors their shore red again, and snow turns to soot under metal boots. Before ice walls melt with heat. Their mother puts them to sleep with stories of the sky. 

“Akkuttujuuk, the two placed far apart,” Kya whispers, in that voice she uses just for storytelling. Soft but distant, guarded from its usual familiarity, like watching someone walk towards you through the snow. “It tells us when we will see the sun again.” 

Sokka and Katara lay bundled under blankets and furs, their breath making small puffs of condensation in the air. The warm musk of seal oil and long extinguished fire settles heavily over them. 

"You know how you like the sunny months?" Kya questions, running her hand over Sokka’s head as she talks, softly tapping his temple with her finger. This will be one of the actions he remembers most vividly, after. But for now he just nods. 

Katara has already begun to fall asleep, despite her best efforts, but Sokka’s eyes are wide and unblinking. He has never been good at falling asleep before knowing how things will turn out.

"Well just remember if you can find Akkuttujuuk, you know you will see the sun soon." His mother smiles at him, tucking the blanket more securely under his chin. “They're far apart in the sky," she continues, looking over her children as they lay curled into each other, close and safe. "But always together."

* 

“The stars tell stories, you know, all of them,” Kya explains, spreading her hands out without looking at him, her face pointed upwards. 

Hakoda has heard the stories before. He has sat by the fire with his mother and his cousins and listened while she explained how the stars came to be, the legends which connect them to the earth.

But Hakoda has always listened more carefully to the ones his father tells. His father, tall and lean, standing in front of him, holding a bone spear. His father with the notch in his eyebrow. He's the one who explains how the stars tell you where you are, and where you need to go. How you watch them at sea, when everything else around you moves.

Hakoda's sixteen. He knows one day the ground will shake again, soot will slant across the sky, and he will have to go to war. That’s what he’s needed to know the stars for.

But now, with Kya, he looks up and sees something different there than he ever has before. Because Kya looks at the sky like that. Even though they know where they are, even though they have nowhere to go.

He looks back at her and grins. “So which one tells ours?”

She laughs, and pushes him into the snowdrift. 


	2. Chapter 2

“You love her don’t you?” Bato asks, without looking at him. “Kya.” 

His voice has always been serious, almost subdued in the way it commands attention, respect. But lately, it's started to sound strained. Like he’s grasping onto its threads. There are times Hakoda finds himself struggling to read him at all. It used to be, that even when Bato was cold or serious, when his face stayed still and neutral, Hakoda would know what he was thinking, what he meant. But now, it’s like Bato is purposefully attempting to stop him, his face shutting like a closed door.

Hakoda looks sideways at him. Tries to find something familiar in his tone, in his profile. When he doesn’t he shrugs, and thinks of Kya. Kya under the stars, Kya carrying a basket of seaweed against her hip, Kya running out of a snowstorm. Kya with the two braids.

He smiles. "Of course I do."

Bato closes his eyes, taking in a breath that stings his nose.

Bato loves Kya too. Just not in the way Hakoda does. But he knows the feeling. He knows it in the way Hakoda’s smiling at him. He knows he’s made that same stupid face when Hakoda walks into the room, hair tousled from the wind, and his impossible smile.

He shakes his head, his reflection bobbing in the water and then disappearing under a block of ice. He turns back to Hakoda and watches as he leans against the lip of the boat, trying to catch the waning hours of white sunlight.

“Good,” Bato decides to say, and realizes how truly he means it. “Someone needs to look out for you.” And Hakoda laughs. That, at least, is for him.


	3. Chapter 3

Sokka is born during a full moon. 

Kanna kneels with Kya in the cold unblinking light as her body gives way to a son. The ice floor of the tent growing pink and red by Kya’s feet, for life and not for death.

*

_Where's mom?_ Sokka yelled, Bato pulling him away, their shore chipped and eroded, and empty suddenly, silently, only the dead to show for it.


	4. Chapter 4

Before Sokka has memorized the sound of twenty boots stomping towards them, and ice splitting under his feet. Before he forgets his mother’s face, and pushes his memories of her down down down, where no one can accidentally touch them, not even himself. Before, he and his sister are unmistakably their mother’s children.

Katara is mom’s shadow, always right behind her, holding her parka in her soft chubby fingers, begging to follow wherever she goes, hurrying to place her footsteps in the hollow Kya just left.

Sokka is mom’s reflection. His face, still smaller and rounder in youth, but hers. Hers from years ago. Hakoda doesn't realize how much until Kya is gone.

Until Katara wakes up one day, and wordlessly makes breakfast. Wordlessly mends the tear in Sokka’s parka, looking down, shaking her head, and for once all Hakoda can see is Katara. Kya's shadow now gone. He watches as she no longer follows anyone, how she starts taking care of them first, just like her mother did. She's Kya's, and no longer just a piece of her, but close to all that is left.

Sokka's comes more slowly. The first time he notices is when his hair falls from his wolf’s tail.

It happened during the time Hakoda became withdrawn with grief, sleeping most of the day, Bato and Kanna picking up the slack.

It was early in the day, Bato standing over a pot of soup, stirring occasionally, Katara - almost too big now to allow it - balanced on his hip.

Sokka had huffed as his hair fell down and then startled at the sound of his father's voice. 

"Need some help buddy?" Hakoda asked and Sokka, his eyes wide and sad, nodded slowly.

Hakoda sat down behind him with a grunt, gathering his hair in his hands. "You know it was your mother who told me to wear my hair in a wolftail like this," he almost whispered.

"Really?" Sokka breathed, just as Bato began walking over.

"Really," Bato affirmed, setting Katara down with a chuckle, Sokka opening his arm almost absently for Katara to crawl under.

"Mom liked hair like this?" he asked as Hakoda ran his hand across his head, remembering the downy softness of his baby hair. How Bato had leaned over him, just minutes old, and asked if Hakoda had been involved in his conception at all. Even then, he looked exactly like his mother.

"She did," Hakoda affirmed, and for the first time using the past tense isn't as painful. Not when it suddenly bleeds into the present. He smiled as Bato rested a hand on his shoulder, squeezing tightly, and Hakoda looked at Sokka just like Bato did that first night. Kya's boy.

Hakoda tugged on the wolftail gently and laughed. "And I don't mind sharing."

That night, as Hakoda watched Sokka carry Katara to bed, fast asleep, and whisper _I love you I love you_ into her sleeping head, he could have sworn that any minute Kya would run inside, shaking her head, covered in snow.


	5. Chapter 5

After the ice shelf has been completely rebuilt, and Sokka has buried his face in his father's stomach, warrior paint leaving its non deadly mark. After his face has fixed fully into his mother's. He meets Yue.

“You’re funny,” she laughs, covering her mouth with her hand, and Sokka watches her intently, like she’ll suddenly spare him a flash of teeth. She leans over the bridge, nose wrinkling, turning away from him and then turning back.

“Ah, I’ve always thought so,” Sokka rolls his arm back and she laughs again.

She turns her head away and starts walking along the bridge, the movement is so sudden that Sokka jogs a step to catch up with her, hoping she doesn't notice. “Boys don’t really care about humor here,” she tells him as he falls in step with her, and watches as he tilts his head in confusion.

“Really?” 

"At least they never try it with me," she explains, her smile fading a bit as she runs her fingers through her hair nervously, like this isn't something she should be talking about. She looks away from him, across the palette of blue and white, her steps slowing. "I think people feel like they need to be formal around me." She looks up again, her cheeks now pink. "You're not like that."

Sokka smiles, he holds his palms out and shrugs. "Well, you know, I try."

"You're not very formal at all for a prince of the Southern Tribe," Yue stops and their shoulders brush, she turns to face him, smiling in her amused doubtful way.

"What?" Sokka's eyebrows furrow before he remembers, quickly straightening and grabbing his right arm with his hand. "I mean right. Yes. Me, a prince." Yue's smile grows. "You know, back home they actually call me the prince of...being funny?"

She laughs at this, her hand coming up, swallowing the sound.

*

The pain of losing Yue sneaks up on him. He misses her. And he feels responsible. He wants to apologize for failing her. For not being able to protect her just like his mom. With Yue, it’s a dull ache. A longing for something, someone, he never truly knew. But he had liked her tinkling laughter, like bells. Her hair that he was sure was impossibly soft, her smile, shy and pink. Her hands and her long fingers.

He loved her kindness, her commitment to her people. He understood it. He felt it for his too. And even though Sokka knew he would do the same, lay down his life for his tribe, for his sister, for Aang, he couldn’t help but feel hurt and broken when she did it. When he saw, again, how the war took a Water Tribe woman away, slipping through his fingers like water.

"You miss her, don't you?" Katara asks the darkness. The boat rocking back and forth.

Sokka closes his eyes. And there's eight year old Katara holding her necklace, yelling _Mom please!,_ and dad sinking into the ground. Bato's hand curled into a fist.

He opens his eyes to a world where they've lost someone again.

"Yeah," he sighs, rolling towards the wall. “But we have to move on." 

The boat rocks back and forth.


	6. Chapter 6

After, what Sokka will remember best is his mother's smell. Sweet and full and slightly sweaty by the end of the day. Real. To Sokka, his mother smelled like what it meant to be human. To be there. 

Once she’s gone, everything smells different. He never realized how much her scent lived in everything. How much he lived in it. How nothing smelled alive once she wasn’t.


	7. Chapter 7

They're passing through the Earth Kingdom when they meet a girl named Song. And her soft voice, and kind eyes, remind Sokka suddenly, almost inexplicably of Yue.

"You can stay here for the night," Song offers. "My mom always makes too much roast duck. I'm sure she'd love to host the Avatar, and his friends."

Katara looks ready to jump at the offer. Even Aang, the vegetarian, is almost visibly bubbling with excitement to make a new friend.

“Thanks,” Sokka starts before they can. He looks at her squarely, reminding himself this isn't Yue. That Yue is gone. He grips his bag tighter. “But we have to get going.”

"What'd you do that for?" Katara questions once they're out of ear shot. 

Sokka walks slightly ahead of her, Aang and Katara in step behind him. "We have a schedule to keep," he insists.

He doesn't tell her that he thinks Song and Yue have the exact same voice. That hearing it come from someone other than her reminds him too much of what happened. Of what he failed to do. "We haven't even made it to Omashu yet and Aang needs an Earthbending teacher."

"I don't know what good a teacher will do him if we all starve before then," she jabs.

"And I've never seen you turn down meat before," Aang chimes in, which makes Katara laugh. 

"Yeah are you feeling alright?" she teases, attempting to reach up and touch his forehead.

"Ha ha," Sokka grumbles as he swats her hand away. "We just don't have time for unplanned stops, okay? We have to keep moving."

They groan behind him but don't push it and the walk settles into familiar comfortable silence. The only sounds left are the leaves under their feet, and Appa's hefty grumbles, and the occasional whisper or giggle shared between Aang and Katara.

Sokka doesn't tell them that the constant motion is the only thing that keeps the ghosts from catching up with him. That he is scared of forgetting Yue's face, just like his mother's. That he doesn't want her voice, too, to be eclipsed by someone else. 


	8. Chapter 8

Hakoda has grown used to missing people. To longing. He misses his father and his cousins. He misses Kya’s sister, gone before Sokka’s birth. He misses the man from the Earth Kingdom with the two different colored eyes. He misses Kya, always. 

But he’s never felt it like this before. He feels heavy with it, like it’s crept into his bones, making a home inside him.

He thinks of Kya’s face at fifteen and tries to imagine what Sokka and Katara might look like now, two years since he's last seen them, but even Kya's face has gotten fuzzier with time. 

It’s night when Hakoda feels, more than sees, Bato approach him. 

“We’re reaching port tomorrow,” he offers. “You should get some rest.”

Hakoda doesn't look up. “I’m not tired."

”You _are_ tired,” Bato contradicts. “You just don’t want to go to sleep.” 

Hakoda grunts, but doesn’t dispute it. He looks out over the water, the ocean thick and black in the night. When he closes his eyes he feels Bato come to stand beside him.

“What do you think they’re doing right now?” he asks Bato quietly.

It’s a conversation they’ve had many times over the past few years. They’ve imagined Sokka looking to the sea out of the watch tower, Katara pulling a wave towards the shore. Kanna swatting them with a rag when they argue.

Bato looks over at Hakoda, tired and slumped over, one hand gripping the ship’s side. Bato leans forward, their shoulder’s knocking, to whisper to him.

“Probably sleeping,” Bato supplies unhelpfully, his voice teasing, and Hakoda laughs despite himself, turning to face him as Bato rests his elbows against the ship’s edge.

Now inches apart, he can smell Bato's hair, salty but clean. Familiar with the unfamiliarity of Earth Kingdom soap. Hakoda breathes in, then sighs. He reaches his hand out to Bato's back, feeling his heart beat beneath his palm before drawing it, almost reluctantly, away.

Hakoda tilts away and shakes his head, letting the feeling dissipate. When he looks back over the water all he can think about is the last time this ship brought them home, and his children running into his arms.

“I miss them so much," he sighs.

”I know,” Bato replies. “They miss you too.”

Hakoda closes his eyes, and breathes deeply past the tightness in his chest. When the ship dips over a wave Bato suddenly looks up, pointing towards the sky, shaking Hakoda's shoulder with his other hand.

“Look, Akkuttujuuk,” he exclaims, as close to exclaiming as Bato ever gets. Hakoda quickly follows his finger to see the two points shining brightly in the distance.

When he looks back to Bato he's smiling. “Maybe that’s what they did today," Bato nods up to the sky. "Watch the stars.”


	9. Chapter 9

Loving Suki is something entirely new.

At first he's afraid it will feel exactly the same as loving Yue. Confusing, terrifying, hard. But Suki never leaves him guessing how she feels. Loving Suki makes him laugh.

She walks out of her room, the temple already full of activity, and stops when she reaches Sokka.

She crosses her arms and feigns seriousness. “Did you do your hair like this on purpose to copy me?” she questions, raising her eyebrows at him, pouting her lips.

“Hey!” Sokka exclaims. And it feels _good_. It feels easy. “I’ll have you know I’ve been wearing my hair like this for months.” He leans towards her, pointing at her face, eyes narrowed. “How do I know _you_ aren’t trying to copy _me_?”

"Really, Sokka?" Katara reprimands from behind them, drawing the water out of her freshly washed clothes.

But Suki just laughs, looking up at Sokka, here, next to her again. She pulls him against her side. “Maybe I am.”


	10. Chapter 10

“I thought I’d find you out here,” Bato’s voice and his feet crunching towards him don't even surprise Hakoda, he feels too tired to be shocked. His bones carrying the weight of six years at war. Of a dead wife, of squeezing fingers that didn't squeeze back.

“Congratulations,” he smiles up at Bato, his breath creating a spiral of white in the air.

“You know,” Bato sighs, sitting down next to him, their shoulders touching, his boots leaving marks in the snow. “I always found it funny you two sat here to watch the stars.” And Hakoda huffs a laugh. "There’s probably a better view on the crest, less people milling around by the water," Bato explains. He doesn't move his hands when he talks. Not like Hakoda and Sokka do. He keeps them by his knees, ready to grab a weapon, ready to run. His lips quirk up. "But you two were always comfortable here. Being a part of everything.”

“Would you like to move, Bato?” Hakoda teases, knocking his shoulder against him, like they're fifteen again. Like somewhere, in some reality, they've never left the South Pole, or even this spot. This very spot.

Bato smiles without looking at him, and for the first time in years it regularly reaches his eyes. “No,” he speaks a little louder now, with full conviction. He reaches out for Hakoda, his fingers finally grabbing something new. New love folded between their hands. “I like it right here.”


	11. Chapter 11

“I’m still here, Sokka,” Suki whispers. Her breath is cold, the hair on her arms standing up. He pulls her closer, rubbing her arm with his hand. Behind them, everyone's asleep, spirals of dust blowing an old life over the stone.

“I know you are,” Sokka tells her, looking straight ahead, out over the edge of the Air Temple.

“You don’t need to do this all on your own, you know.”

His eyebrows furrow as he looks at her. Suki. Her hair still ruffled from the journey, a bruise forming on her shin. Brown eyes.

"Do what?"

“Protect everyone," she explains, and almost laughs at the look he gives her. “All of you do it, you know. You all try to protect everyone so much, you don’t even realize all the others want is to protect you."

Sokka imagines Aang’s body dropping into black water, Katara's blood on the snow. He shakes his head. Looks away.

"You should let them," she presses, and when he doesn't respond she leans closer. "You should let _me_.” 

He wants to tell her that he doesn't know if he can protect them all, even though it's all he ever tries to do. He wants to tell her that he couldn’t protect his mother. That when he thinks of her he still sees Katara’s face. He still sees her eight year old eyes fresh with tears, and her body curling over in the snow. Yelling, _She's going to come back, Sokka! She has to come back!_ And the sobs that caught in his throat.

He couldn't protect his mother. But he still has Katara. And he has to. He has to.

Suki sighs softly, reaching out to thread her fingers through his. “When we start training as Kyoshi warriors, we learn to depend on each other as an extension of ourselves," Suki tells him, staring out into the blackness below, where trees rasp blindly in the wind. "We work together like one being. We depend on each other equally. And that doesn’t make us weaker, we’re stronger together," she squeezes his hand. "And you guys are too.”

The women around him have always sacrificed, always protected. It’s in their blood. His mother, his sister, Yue, Suki.

He turns to watch Suki smile, her hair blowing in the wind, touching her shoulders shyly. He squeezes her hand back and nods, her skin reflecting moonlight, like a promise.

**Author's Note:**

> so some notes!  
> Akkuttujuuk, the two placed far apart, is an Inuit constellation, and the one they use to tell when the sunny months are coming.
> 
> The title is of course from Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah, the only song ever written, bc cmon is there a more perfect lyric to describe sokka’s feelings.
> 
> sokka looking just like kya is based on a tumblr post (by yuujinchos-remade), the person who said it said it in the tags and the tags were reblogged by someone else so i don't know who said it originally but if you do pls lmk and i'll credit them!
> 
> And yes, in my head all atla characters have brown eyes.
> 
> Some notes on my characterization: i wanted kya and kanna to be interested in the stars and legends because I felt like that is where katara would get her hope and beliefs from, while hakoda is focused on the war and being a warrior just like sokka.  
> some more specific character notes: sokka saying "back home they call me the prince of...being funny?" was inspired by the boiling rock ep when he says "the only thing we're hatching is...an egg?" and then the conversation with suki in the last chapter is of course inspired by the serpent's pass sukka conversation where suki says "I can take care of myself" to which sokka replies "i know you can".


End file.
